The latest report involving the Dodgers star right-fielder may be the most disturbing yet, and it sounds like something out of an Oliver Stone screenplay.
USA Today is reporting that Yasiel Puig has been receiving recent threats on his life. The tale is being told by a Cuban boxer, Yunior Despaigne, who claims he defected Cuba with Puig and is fearful for his own safety, after an encounter with a mysterious “visitor” in which he was held at gun-point and told Puig would be killed if he didn’t pay “them”. “Them” being a group of Cuban smugglers who’d gotten Puig, along with others, out of Cuba and into Mexico, en route to the United States.
“The man pushed me up against my car and pressed a pistol to my liver and told me to tell Puig if he didn’t pay them, that they would kill him,” Despaigne said.
Despaigne said Puig agreed to pay several human traffickers twenty percent of his future earnings (he signed a $42 million, seven-year contract in June, 2012), has not paid the money he owes, and that Puig has severed all ties with him.
Despaigne also claimed he began to worry for his own safety when he was informed that the man who’d visited him with the warning (whom he’d found out was named Yandrys Leon), had been killed in Cancun.
Puig has denied the reports through his agent, Adam Katz; adding in an interview at San Fransico’s AT&T Park:
“I’m only thinking about working on the things that are going to make me a better ballplayer” he said.
If this story is even half true, Puig better use some of that huge contract he was awarded to invest in some Navy Seal-esq security, because this sounds like it has the potential to get ugly. The entire report is definitely worth a read.
Stay tuned.